The world has changed over the last 10 years. According to the CTIA, the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, cellular/mobile phone (hereinafter “cell phone”) usage in the United States alone has grown by over 46% from 2005-2010, while at the same time, the growth in cell-phone-only households (i.e., those households that have disconnected their home land-line phone and now only use a cell phone) has increased by an astounding 217%! The result is that at least 85% of people in the United States now have a cell phone and at least 25% of all households in the United States can no longer be reached on a conventional landline.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (hereinafter, the “TCPA” or the “Act”) was originally enacted to protect any phone user from aggressive telemarketing practices that were deemed a nuisance and an invasion of privacy. In addition, because many cell phone users have plans that charge by the minute or number of calls used by the phone, consumers were obviously not happy to receive unwanted sales or telemarketing calls on their cell phones that would use up limited time or increase the cost of using the cell phone. As often happens, however, laws enacted for a specific and useful purpose are often written and/or interpreted in an overly broad manner and have unintended and negative consequences on legitimate businesses and business practices in the industry. In this case, the TCPA significantly limits the ability of legitimate businesses, directly or through an outsourced call center, to use communication technology effectively to call cell phones of the existing consumer base of such business. Specifically, the TCPA prohibited any business or call center from calling a cell phone using an “Automatic Telephone Dialing System” or leaving an artificial or pre-recorded message for the called party, if the call is made without the prior “Express Consent” of the recipient and if the recipient is charged for the call. Although it was assumed that legitimate businesses could easily obtain “Express Consent” from their own consumers and, thus, avoid the onerous limitations and penalties of the TCPA intended for telemarketers and advertisers; in practice, because consumers frequently change their cell phone numbers, it has become effectively impossible for legitimate businesses and call centers to rely upon prior “Express Consent” from their consumers because a call to a cell number that has been transferred by a consenting consumer to a non-consumer or other third party is deemed a violation of the Act and subjects the business and call center to potential liability and fines.
The prohibitions imposed by the TCPA, by associated FCC regulations, and by recent case law interpreting the Act and its regulations, plus the severe penalties mandated by the Act for noncompliance, whether intentional or not, have greatly increased the risk and burden on legitimate businesses that need to reach out to a large portion of their consumer base. The TCPA significantly limits call centers (and any similar companies or business departments) from calling their consumer base on a large scale in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Thus, there is a definite need in the industry to enable businesses and call centers to reach the consumer base of a legitimate business (i.e., one that is not a telemarketer or advertisement agency) on a large scale in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
A number of service providers have offered “Preview Dialing” as a potential solution to this issue. Preview Dialing is a solution in which an Automatic Telephone Dialing System (ATDS) presents a call center agent with information about the prospect, consumer, or consumer (which terms can be used interchangeably herein) to be called and requires a specific response or decision by the agent to make the call. However, recent court decisions have held that when evaluating whether equipment is an ATDS that violates restrictions in the Act, the determination is merely whether the communication equipment has the capacity “to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator.” Thus, a system need not actually store, produce, or call randomly or sequentially generated telephone numbers in order to qualify as an ATDS, it need only have the capability to do so. Such court decisions have caused most companies to conclude, incorrectly, that mere “Preview Dialing” is not in compliance with the TCPA.
Other service providers have resorted to using outsourced, offshore call centers with agents who hand-dial cell phone numbers, which clearly avoids the limitations of “automated” dialing equipment prohibited by the Act. When a cell number is called and the call center agent verifies that the correct or “Right Party” has been reached, such offshore agents can then either communicate the purpose of the call with the cell phone user or transfer the call to a more highly trained call center agent in the United States to take over the communication process with the consumer. Obviously, using cheap labor overseas to hand-dial each number avoids the limitations imposed by the Act, but such a process is very slow, inefficient, and often ineffective. In addition, most hand-dialing systems, while compliant with the TCPA, typically do not offer the management and reporting functions needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the call center or do not adequately maintain electronic records to confirm and maintain an audit trail confirming that the calling process was implemented in a TCPA-compliant manner.
For these and many other reasons, there remains a need in the industry for systems, processes, and devices that enable call centers and legitimate businesses to contact their consumer base on a large scale in an efficient and cost-effective manner, while still maintaining compliance with the TCPA. This is especially true as the growth in the number of cell phones continues to increase and the number of landlines continues to decrease.
For these and many other reasons, there is a general need, in a first aspect of the present invention, for a computerized system for efficiently and quickly calling cellular/mobile phones (“cell phones”) of a large group of consumers/customers (“consumers”) of a client in a manner compliant with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), comprising a call center database to contain a cleaned consumer call list of the client, wherein the cleaned consumer call list contains information associated with each of the large group of consumers of the client and wherein the information includes the name, client account number, and cell phone number of each respective consumer; a plurality of call center workstations, wherein each call center workstation is operated by a respective transfer agent, includes an interactive display for use by the respective transfer agent, and is configured to enable the respective transfer agent to initiate a call to the cell phone number of a respective one of the large group of consumers of the client, speak with the respective one consumer, and transfer the call once the respective transfer agent has confirmed that the recipient of the call is the respective one consumer; a plurality of client workstations, wherein each client workstation is operated by a respective client associate, is configured to receive the call with the respective one consumer when transferred by the respective transfer agent, and includes an interactive display for use by the respective client associate; and a cell phone communication processor in electronic communication with the call center database and with each of the call center workstations, wherein the cell phone communication processor includes non-transitory computer-readable media, and wherein the computer-readable media has computer-readable instructions which, when executed by the cell phone communication processor, causes the cell phone communication processor to perform the steps of: (i) retrieving the cell phone number of the respective one consumer from the cleaned consumer call list stored in the call center database; (ii) receiving an initiate call instruction from the respective transfer agent to initiate the call; (iii) in response to the initiate call instruction received from the respective transfer agent, dialing the cell phone number of the respective one consumer; (iv) determining if a live voice is detected when the call is answered by the recipient and, if so, connecting the call to the respective transfer agent; (v) displaying the information associated with the respective one consumer on the interactive display of the respective work station of the respective transfer agent; (vi) thereafter, receiving a transfer call instruction from the respective transfer agent to transfer the call to the respective client workstation of the respective client associate; (vii) in response to the transfer call instruction, transferring the call to the respective client associate and providing the cell phone number of the respective one consumer as the origination number of the call; (viii) after the call has been successfully transferred and a connection established between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate, disconnecting the connection between the respective one consumer and the respective transfer agent; and (ix) identifying a next consumer from the cleaned consumer call list to call and then awaiting a next initiate call instruction to be received from the respective transfer agent.
In a feature of the first aspect, the computerized system further includes a client database for storing an initial consumer call list. In another feature, the information associated with each of the large group of consumers included in the initial consumer call list is updated upon completion of calling all of the cell phone numbers from the cleaned consumer call list. In another feature, the information associated with each of the large group of consumers included in the initial consumer call list is updated in the client database based on the results of the call between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate. In yet another feature, the information associated with each of the large group of consumers included in the initial consumer list is updated in the client database based on the results of the call between the respective one consumer and the respective transfer agent. In another feature, the cell phone communication processor performs the additional step of updating the information associated with the respective one consumer in the call center database after dialing the cell phone number of the respective one consumer. In yet a further feature, the origination number of the call between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate is used to obtain information associated with the respective one consumer from the client database and to display said information during the call on the interactive display of the respective work station of the respective client associate.
In another feature of the first aspect, the initial consumer call list is uploaded from the client database to the call center database. In yet a further feature, the cell phone communication processor performs the additional step of converting the initial consumer call list into the cleaned consumer call list. In a further feature, the cell phone communication processor converts the initial consumer call list to the cleaned consumer call list by eliminating any consumer records in which the cell phone number (i) has been converted to a landline number, (ii) is incomplete or has an invalid area code; (iii) is included on a “no call” list; (iv) is identified as a number that always rolls to an answering machine; (v) is identified as a number that is never answered; and (vi) is identified as a duplicate cell phone number used with two or more consumer records.
In a yet further feature, the respective transfer agent provides the initiate call instruction to the cell phone communication processor by clicking on a button displayed on the interactive display of the respective work station of the respective transfer agent.
In another feature, the respective transfer agent provides the initiate call instruction to the cell phone communication processor by disconnecting the connection with the respective one consumer. In yet a further feature, the respective transfer agent remains on the call between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate for a period of time after the call has been transferred to the respective client associate but before disconnecting the connection with the respective one consumer.
In another feature, the respective transfer agent drops off or disconnects from the call between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate immediately upon transferring the call to the respective client associate.
In another feature of the first aspect, the cell phone communication processor only permits a call to be made to the respective one consumer during a permitted time window defined by the TCPA and wherein the respective one consumer is assumed to be in a time zone based on (i) the area code of the cell phone number, (ii) the zip code of the address of the respective one consumer, or (iii) the overlap of both the area code and zip code.
In a further feature, if the cell phone communication processor determines that a live voice is not detected, the cell phone communication processor then determines whether the call has been answered by an answering machine. If the cell phone communication processor determines that the call has been answered by the answering machine, the cell phone communication processor disconnects the call. On the other hand, if the cell phone communication processor determines that the call has not been answered by the answering machine, the cell phone communication processor hangs up the call, updates the information associated with the respective one consumer in the call center database to indicate a disposition of the call, identifies the next consumer from the cleaned consumer call list to call, and then waits for the next initiate call instruction to be received from the respective transfer agent.
In yet a further feature, if the call with the cell phone number is successfully connected to the respective transfer agent but not successfully transferred to the respective client associate, the cell phone communication processor receives an explanation for the failed call transfer from the respective transfer agent, updates the information associated with the respective one consumer in the call center database to indicate the explanation for the failed call transfer, identifies the next consumer from the cleaned consumer call list to call, and then awaits the next initiate call instruction to be received from the respective transfer agent.
In yet a further feature, the cell phone communication processor provides a list on the interactive display of the respective work station of the respective transfer agent from which the respective transfer agent is able to select the explanation for the failed call transfer.
In a second aspect, in a computerized system having a cell phone communication processor, wherein the processor includes non-transitory computer-readable media containing computer-readable instructions which, when executed by the cell phone communication processor, perform a method of efficiently and quickly calling cellular/mobile phones (“cell phones”) of a large group of consumers/customers (“consumers”) of a client in a manner compliant with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), comprising the steps of: (a) uploading an initial consumer call list from the client; (b) converting the initial consumer call list into a cleaned consumer call list, wherein the cleaned consumer call list contains information associated with each of the large group of consumers of the client and wherein the information includes the name, client account number, and cell phone number of each respective consumer; (c) storing the cleaned consumer call list in a call center database, the cell phone communication processor in electronic communication with the call center database; (d) retrieving a cell phone number of a respective one consumer from the cleaned consumer call list; (e) receiving an initiate call instruction from a respective transfer agent to initiate a call to the respective one consumer, wherein the respective transfer agent operates a call center workstation in electronic communication with the cell phone communication processor; (f) in response to the initiate call instruction received from the respective transfer agent, dialing the cell phone number of the respective one consumer; (g) determining if a live voice is detected when the call is answered by a recipient of the call and, if so, connecting the call to the respective transfer agent; (h) displaying the information associated with the respective one consumer on an interactive display of the call center work station of the respective transfer agent; (i) thereafter, receiving a transfer call instruction from the respective transfer agent to transfer the call to a client workstation of a respective client associate; (j) in response to the transfer call instruction, transferring the call to the respective client associate and providing the cell phone number of the respective one consumer as the origination number of the call; (k) after the call has been successfully transferred and a connection established between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate, disconnecting the connection between the respective one consumer and the respective transfer agent; (l) identifying a next consumer from the cleaned consumer call list to call; and then (m) awaiting a next initiate call instruction to be received from the respective transfer agent.
In a feature of the second aspect, updating the information associated with each of the large group of consumers included in the initial consumer call list upon completion of calling of all of the cell phone numbers from the cleaned consumer call list. In another feature, updating in the client database the information associated with each of the large group of consumers included in the initial consumer call list based on the results of the call between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate. In yet another feature, updating in the client database the information associated with each of the large group of consumers included in the initial consumer list based on the results of the call between the respective one consumer and the respective transfer agent. In another feature, the cell phone communication processor performs the additional steps of updating the information associated with the respective one consumer in the call center database after dialing the cell phone number of the respective one consumer. In yet a further feature, providing the origination number of the respective one consumer to the respective client associate to enable the respective client associate to obtain information associated with the respective one consumer and to enable display of said information during the is call on an interactive display of the respective work station of the respective client associate.
In another feature of the second aspect, the cell phone communication processor performs the step of converting the initial consumer call list into the cleaned consumer call list by eliminating any consumer records in which the cell phone number (i) has been converted to a landline number, (ii) is incomplete or has an invalid area code; (iii) is included on a “no call” list; (iv) is identified as a number that always rolls to an answering machine; (v) is identified as a number that is never answered; and (vi) is identified as a duplicate cell phone number used with two or more consumer records.
In a yet further feature, receiving the initiate call instruction when the respective transfer agent clicks on a button displayed on the interactive display of the respective work station of the respective transfer agent.
In another feature, receiving the initiate call instruction when the respective transfer agent disconnects the connection with the respective one consumer. In yet a further feature, the respective transfer agent remains on the call between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate for a period of time after the call has been transferred to the respective client associate but before disconnecting the connection with the respective one consumer.
In another feature, the respective transfer agent drops off the call between the respective one consumer and the respective client associate immediately upon transferring the call to the respective client associate.
In another feature of the second aspect, further comprising the step of only permitting a call to be made to the respective one consumer during a permitted time window defined by the TCPA and wherein the respective one consumer is assumed to be in a time zone based on (i) the area code of the cell phone number, (ii) the zip code of the address of the respective one consumer, or (iii) the overlap of both the area code and zip code.
In a further feature, if the cell phone communication processor determines that a live voice is not detected, the cell phone communication processor then determines whether the call has been answered by an answering machine. If the cell phone communication processor determines that the call has been answered by the answering machine, the cell phone communication processor disconnects the call. On the other hand, if the cell phone communication processor determines that the call has not been answered by the answering machine, the cell phone communication processor hangs up the call, updates the information associated with the respective one consumer in the call center database to indicate a disposition of the call, identifies the next consumer from the cleaned consumer call list to call, and then awaits the next initiate call instruction to be received from the respective transfer agent.
In yet a further feature, if the call with the cell phone number is successfully connected to the respective transfer agent but not successfully transferred to the respective client associate, the cell phone communication processor receives an explanation for the failed call transfer from the respective transfer agent, updates the information associated with the respective one consumer in the call center database to indicate the explanation for the failed call transfer, identifies the next consumer from the cleaned consumer call list to call, and then awaits the next initiate call instruction to be received from the respective transfer agent.
In yet a further feature, providing a list on the interactive display of the respective work station of the respective transfer agent from which the respective transfer agent is able to select the explanation for the failed call transfer.
The present inventions as described in greater detail herein meet one or more of the above-referenced needs as will become apparent from the disclosure and details that follow.